US, Rwanda in dispute over second-hand clothes

Donald Trump and Paul Kagame did not seem too close when they met in January. Photo/AFP

Washington DC, Monday

US President Donald Trump’s “America First” stance on global trade has hit Rwanda, by imposing tariffs on clothing exports from the tiny East African nation.

The issue revolves around an obscure import, second-hand clothes, and Rwanda’s refusal to back down from the fight.

In March 2018, the US gave Rwanda 60 days’ notice that it would be suspending the landlocked country from selling clothes to America duty free — a status it enjoys under the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa).

Agoa is the flagship US trade legislation designed to boost trade and investment in qualifying African countries by granting duty-free access to 6,500 exported products.

Those 60 days have now expired. The idea is to protect its nascent garment and textile industry. Many African nations were once home to vibrant textile industries. But decades of mismanagement, instability, and increased global competition have taken a toll.

This can be seen in Ghana, where a study found that market liberalisation the 1980s had led to a sharp drop in textile and clothing jobs — from 25,000 people in 1977 to just 5,000 in 2000. Kenya had half a million garment workers a couple of decades ago. Today that number is in the tens of thousands.

Second-hand clothing is one factor in the near-collapse of the garment industry in sub-Saharan Africa. The West’s cast-offs were so cheap that local textile factories and self-employed tailors could not compete.

According to a study by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), in 2015 the East African Community (EAC) accounted for nearly 13 per cent of global imports of used clothing, worth $274 million (Sh27 billion).

Around 67 per cent of the population in East Africa purchased at least a portion of their clothes from used clothing markets, the USaid study found.

East African governments argued that domestic demand for locally made clothes was being suffocated by cheap, second-hand clothes.

So in 2015, countries in the EAC announced that second-hand apparel would be banned from their markets from 2019. – BBC